newworship blog

A Few of My Favorite Things - Music of '06

Kind of a slow year for my own taste. But, still reaped a few good things. Just a few of the things that caught my ear and I actually listen to released in '06.

Muse - Black Holes and Revelations

Probably my favorite recording of '06. Muse continues to grow and define their own creative voice. Early on they were plagued by Radiohead comparisons. But they have thoroughly avoided that as they develop. I hear more Rachmaninoff and Queen than Radiohead by far. Creative, original, melodramatic, heavy, bloated and way too self important, but you gotta love their passion and musicianship. I saw these guys when they cqame to Kansas City this last year and that sold me on what a great band they are.

Switchfoot - Oh! Gravity

Just snuck inn under the wire for '06. Great record from a great band. This is probably their heaviest and most musically adventureous record. Think the energy of Foo Fighters meets old Switchfoot. As always, Jon Foreman is a soul searcher who is willing to ask the questions of himself and American culture without having the answers. I really like this recording.

India Arie - Testimony, Vol. 1: Life & Relationship

Such a soulful and well written, painfully honest collection of songs. Gotta love India. Easily one of the best of the year.

Mutemath - Mutemath

Great live band and a creative force I hope wil be around for a long time. Love these guys. Although not as strong as their EP, this is still a terrific listen when you are craving a different "flava."

Thom Yorke - The Eraser

An aquired taste. Very vibey, cool and original.

Beck - The Information

Only Beck can get away with mixing so many genres and have it come out like music was always "meant to bethat way." I love the genre busting disrespect for accepted pop form and his  willing ness to explore other art forms.

Honorable Mention -

John Mayer - Continuum - Starting to sound a little too self important to my ears. But I love how he is digging into old Stevie Ray Vaughan, Clapton and George Harrison and bringing those influences to a modern pop audience. I still like the John Mayer Trio live album better.

Leeland - Sound of Melodies - Great new worship album.

Mindy Smith - Long Island Shores - Hauntingly beautiful singer.

Cat Power -  The Greatest - A truly original voice.

Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream - Just because he's Joseph Arthur and he's awesome!

Charlotte Martin - Stromata - Another terrific singer songwriter.

Brazilian Girls - Talk to La Bomb - Talk about genre bending! Yikes.

The Crystal Method - Drive: Nike+ Original Run - A 45 minute continuous recording meant to mimic the workout curve of a good run. Surprisingly easy and fun to listen to. Probably the best voice in electronic music today.

New Ipod List - I must be bored!

Man, am I bored with music right now. My ipod is filled with great artists. But, nothing is really grabbing me for more than 1 or 2 songs at a time. I find myself flitting all over the place. It's all good. I just can't seem to focus on any particular recording. See the typepad list below.

Remember when you were a kid and you would listen to the same few records every day on headphones (for those of you old enough to have had "records"). I miss that feeling of being immersed in something and just loving it. I probably listen to Styx' "Pieces of Eight" every day for a year. How about Kansas' "Point of No Return!" man did I love geek rock in high school. Pink Floyd, The Who, Springsteen "Born to Run,"  The Eagles, Queen, The Cars. Oh man, was that great!!

The last couple of recordings that did that for me in recent history were U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" and Coldplay's "X&Y." But, I pretty much wore them out

Is it me or is music less compelling these days? It's probably me and my space in life. I have to really like something to invest a bunch of time into it.

There is supposed to be a new Lauren Hill recording coming. I really look forward to that.

What about you? Is there anything that is grabbing you in a big way right now?

 

Am I Schizo or What?

If you look at my listening typelist on the blog you will see what's currently making it into the car rotation. (That seems to be the only place i really "listen" to music.) I think my pattern starts to look restless like that when I am bored with all th regular music I would spend most of my time with. There isn't a new Coldplay, U2, Radiohead, Sting, Peter Gabriel etc... to gobble up those precious 5 minute commutes.

Is there Any Good Christian Music?

More musings on Christian music from Lou Carlozo. And some great recommendations on great music that is under the radar.

Link: Dick Staub:
Staublog -
Guestblog: Lou Carlozo. More Musings on.

Tim's Story - Part 4

The last 4 years have been a ferocious mix of discovery and rebuilding my legacy in Christ. I would love to tell you that it has always been easy, but it hasn’t. Finding places in my life that have forced me to forgive others and myself, and asking for forgiveness from those I have hurt. The only way I have been able to take this path of recovery, the ONLY way, has been in knowing I haven’t been walking it alone. There have been so many people who have walked with me and encouraged me as I have worked the 12-steps. Perhaps the greatest measure of my recovery has been walking side by side with the most courageous people I know. The guys in the SA group, who have affirmed me time and time again as a man, not as a label… the worship band, men and women in the whole program have given me a completely clean perspective on my life. David Bruns is the best big brother a guy could have. His wisdom has been crucial to my survival and his compassion is so Christ-like it overwhelms me. I have moved from fear to faith, from hopelessness to dreams of a noble future, from death to significance, from self-reproach and the indignity of my past to a life filled with purpose. I have finally found the relationship that I have longed for all my life…Jesus Christ…the one who knows me…and I know Him.

Two summers ago, several of us went to the Celebrate Recovery summit at Saddleback. One night, we decided to drive to Laguna to have a nice relaxing dinner, and perhaps wade in the Pacific. After dinner, we drove down the boulevard until I saw a side street that looked like it went to the beach. We parked on the boulevard and walked down the street to steps that would lead us to the sand. I began to notice that things looked vaguely familiar. I walked to the railing of the steps that looked down on the beach. There it was. The rock I sat on 10 years earlier. God, somehow, never ceases to send me bolts of lightning out of the blue…signs of His mind-blowing love for me. I ran down the steps, took off my sandals and ran to the rock, climbed it and sat down in the exact same spot where I sat 10 years before. I looked around and again saw men walking the beach. This time I saw something entirely different. An endless procession of humanity, forever traveling a shadowy, gloomy path that will never lead anywhere other than the place it began…misery, always seeking but never satisfied, searching for the next “fix” to numb the fear, shame and guilt of a life never lived.

I can’t say the old feelings were completely gone. That there was no temptation. That the pull of the past wasn’t still lurking in some corner of my less than perfect heart. But, I did know that by the grace of God, I never ever want to go back there again. All I could do was sit on that rock and thank my Father for being so faithful to a sinner like me. Refusing to let me go when I desperately wanted Him too. For walking with me during my recovery process and gently whispering His encouragement to my less than perfect heart and reminding me that I am His son, and that He is the lover I have longed for all my life, the lover of my soul…and He will never ever leave me.

But, there was something else I felt last sumer atop that rock. There was a marked sadness and a feeling of loss that I couldn’t immediately account for. I looked out at the starry night and watched the foam of the sea crash on the sand when it suddenly hit me. That guy 10 years ago. The one with all the dreams, hopes, visions of what he wanted his future to be. Where did he go? How had he gotten so lost? A deep sense of sorrow set in. I know God had to take me to that exact spot or I would never have realized that it was there that I made my choice and turned away from the Truth a decade earlier…trying to make it on my own, by my own devices. But, there was this new setback, a different obstacle that I didn’t understand. The Lord helped me realize then that the choices I make in my life are not isolated. They ripple through the entire spectrum of my life, compounding on each other, anesthetizing every direction I want to take. When we got back to the hotel, I sat by the pool and cried out to God. “I understand why you had me go back there. I’m so thankful to You for revealing to me the victories You have performed in my life. But, why did You let me face the loss and regret of all my unfulfilled dreams? They were good dreams. They meant something to me.”

And the Lord whispered to my heart. “You chose to walk with me to a place of recovery and victory. We’ve come full circle…we’ve come full circle together. Now…let’s start over, from that long ago place…Let’s look for and reclaim that man and his dreams.” I believe God is in the resurrection business. I believe that includes dreams that have died. In Joshua 5, God says, “Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery.’ So that place has been called Gilgal to this day.” Last summer, God granted me my Gilgal. My place of rest. He rolled away forever the shame of my slavery.

One of the questions I get asked most is whether or not I think I was born with these desires or did I learn them. Nature vs. nurture. My stock answer was this. Does it matter? Either way, my desires are the same. Then, Tim Lundy gave me this verse. It is now one of my many life-verses.

I don’t believe I’ll find absolute victory in this life. But I can tell you this…I claim victory every day of my life. I believe as my recovery progresses, since it never ends until I finally see Jesus face to face, that Jesus will keep returning me to more rocks, giving me the chance, courage and faith to find new places that we can walk together toward healing and victory.

Victory is never won without a battle. Victory is not worth being called victory if it is not gained at a life transforming cost and sometimes great loss. But the taste of victory is very sweet. The smell of victory is an unwavering desire for profound life change. It is a pleasing aroma to our Father. Running the race is worth the pain. And I find myself now, willing to climb and sit down on top of every rock in my path if it gives me a clearer view of my Savior, my Redeemer, my best Friend, the One who has rolled away the shame of my slavery, the One who tells me “I know you…and you know Me!” I have found my authentic ‘safe place’ high atop the true Rock. Psalm 61:1&2 – “Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

Am I cured? No! There will always be places in my life that need work.

Have I been delivered? Yes! I have been delivered from the chains of loneliness, the prison of isolation and the dark, dreary dread of an uncertain future into the arms of a ridiculously wild, fiercely passionate and outrageously unrestrained love affair with Jesus Christ.

Thank you for letting me share.

Tim's Story Part 3

I moved back home to Arkansas after the Northridge Quake in 1994. The addiction continued. I would go online, find someone to spend a few hours with, numbing myself to the pain of my loneliness and medicating myself against the gentle whispers of a Father who flatly refused to let me go and continued to watch by the window for me to come back home. I didn’t want to feel Him. And because I was in a constant state of denial, not listening to God, I was persistently praying that He would forgive me. At some point, I began to recognize that I no longer felt guilt or shame about my actions. But in the back of my consciousness there was also the nagging awareness that though I was in physical contact with men all the time, I was more alone and friendless than ever. At first, this bothered me. But, later my addiction became so gravely severe that I blocked out any outside interference. Sometimes, it took as many as 3 partners a night to sustain my denial…but at the time, isolated and angry, it was worth it.

But, God’s radical tenderness wouldn’t allow my disobedience and defiance. He knew I understood too much about him. Romans 1 says, “But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. So God said, in effect, ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.’ It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshipped the god they made instead of the God who made them – the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!!! Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either – women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men – all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh how they paid for it – emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches. Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose.”

In his immeasurable and ruthless love, God chose to step back just far enough from me so that I could experience the senseless separation from Him . It was at that point I began to realize the absolute waste of what my life had become. I knew God perfectly well, but had stopped treating him like God. Refusing to worship Him, I trivialized myself into confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in my life. I pretended to have the answer, but was really ignorant regarding life. I traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in His hands for cheap figurines I could buy at any roadside stand. The loneliness of my life on top of the rock that night was nothing compared to the fear of a life without God and the grief of being without Him. My anguish was palpable and my depression bitterly relentless. I could see no way out. The world I loved was a full-blown sham. The fortress I had built around myself seemed impenetrable. The ache of loneliness and isolation was tangible. I wanted out. I even considered going into a chat room, finding someone that was HIV positive and spending the night with him, just to give myself a sense of finality to the pain I felt. Instead, I decided to call anyone I could think of to get help. I called the Napa Valley Counseling Center. One of the first things mentioned was a new program that was beginning called Celebrate Recovery. I really did NOT want to do anything like that. But, I was tired of trying to walk through this alone. It just wasn’t working. So, I decided to give it a go. The first night I went, I literally forced myself to take one step after another through the front door. I was as anxious as I had ever been over anything.

Tim's Story Part 2

In 1990 I moved to Burbank, California. I had 2 female roommates. We decided one weekend to go to the beach to spend time talking about the future. Our dreams, our visions of what we wanted for our lives and how we planned to realize these goals. We found a bed and breakfast close to the beach. After dinner we went down to the beach, which was right behind the B&B. There on the beach was a huge rock, about 9 feet tall. We walked in the sand for a while, letting the ocean wash over our feet. As the sun sank lower toward the horizon, we noticed that the beach had become a bit more deserted. When dark finally settled, we climbed on top of the rock and started to talk. I remember one thing that happened to me during the next couple of hours...a sense of hope. We all had common interests and common goals. And it seemed the future was filled with promise and possibility. As it became darker, I began to notice more and more people beginning to walk by, mostly men. Then, as I looked around, I noticed that Lisa and Cece were, in fact, the only 2 women on the beach. We had, apparently, stumbled onto a late night hang out beach for gay men.

As I watched men walking back and forth on the beach, something began to stir in my spirit. I felt blood pounding through my heart. It was an adrenaline rush, as though I had stumbled onto a secret pleasure, some sort of forbidden thrill I had never fully experienced before. I didn’t realize that I was already beginning, even then, to believe in an immediate although counterfeit sense of identity. Up until this point, because of my very strict, fundamental, legalistic religious up-bringing, I tried to keep my life in a quasi-celebate mode, mostly successful; very rarely, not so successful. I ran from my own sexuality to the point of isolation. But, something happened that night that can only be explained as a beginning. Not a journey that leads to life and victory, but to a death of the pursuit of holiness and a conscious descent into my own personal hell. I watched for several hours the dark dance of human desire and need as it paraded by my ‘safe’ place high atop the rock. I began to wonder if I’d been too hard on myself, all my life, by denying myself the chance to seek out a long term relationship with another man. The need to ‘know and be known’ was my deepest, most overpowering desire.

The next morning I made my way back to the beach and the top of the rock with my journal. I knew at that moment that I wanted, needed and longed for the companionship of another man in a close and intimate way. I talked to God and told Him that I knew it wasn’t the best way, not His true way for intimacy, but I wanted it. I longed for someone that would take away my aloneness and my miserable loneliness. I prayed He would have enough grace to forgive me. But, it was time for me to take the risk and move to a different place in my life by finding someone to have a relationship with. I had, in short, artificially manufactured my own ‘spiritual awakening’. So, began my 10 year flight from God into the dark recesses of my own man-made hell. Obadiah 1:3 reads, “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights.”

Soon after the beach experience, I got my first computer, and soon discovered the devious, calculating, tricky, sly, deceitful, untrustworthy, cunning, scheming and ultimately deadly joy of the internet. I found chat rooms. I went into gay chats, and for the first time, felt accepted and significant…that I had finally found the right place for me in the world. Before long, I began to engage in anonymous sexual encounters. At first there was excruciating guilt and determination to never go there again. But, in time, it got easier. The guilt began to subside and was replaced with a new sense of belonging and acceptance. For a few hours, I could escape into a world where I was the focal point of someone’s need…even though they were strangers. For a few hours, I was important to someone. For a few hours, I wasn’t ugly. During those hours, the need for affection was stronger than the fear of death. And during those hours, it was worth the risk. I was still waiting to hear someone/anyone say, “I’m proud of you.”

Tim's Story Part 1

A friend of mine has grown up in the church. His experience is not typical of those in the evangelical church. But, it probably echoes with us more frquently than we would like to admit. And, like many, he has struggled with homosexuality nearly his whole life. He has a tremendous story and has courageoously agreed to share it with us all. I will post it in sections over the next couple of days.

Hi. My name is Tim. I’m a follower of Christ, and I am a recovering sex addict. I was born in Dallas, Tx. My father was a preacher, my mom, the ever-vigilant minister’s wife. We were, in the eyes of the people entrusted to my father’s ministerial care, the perfect family.

In this perfect family, beatings were regular, and not regulated by duration or severity. I wish I could say they came out of nowhere. That my parents would fly at me in a blind rage for no reason. At least I could have realized at an early age that it wasn’t really my fault. But, there was always a reason…talking in church, bad grades, having an opinion. I always thought the beatings were evenly distributed between all the kids. Recently, though, during a conversation with my younger brother, he told me that I definitely got the lion’s share of the punishment. I have begun to rebuild pieces of my past that I have completely forgotten. He asked if I remembered mom throwing me to the ground and beating me with the heel of her high-heeled shoe. I have, since then, remembered walking back to our bedroom where I pulled up my pant leg to see cuts and blood running down my legs. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t reminded by my father that I was stupid, worthless and ugly. To this day, he has never said that he’s proud of me.

Mom would never come out and say that Dad was having affairs. She would, in front of us, verbally annihilate him, and warn him that she would tell us the truth. Not believing the allegations to be true, but dreading that they were. Sundays, driving to and from church, were filled with explosive innuendo about his infidelities. Finally, Christmas Eve of my senior year, during a verbal assault, she screamed at him to tell me the truth. It was the last arrow she had, she had waited years to use it, and she knew it had hit the center of its target. He just looked at me with almost unbearable regret. Mom proceeded to ask who I would live with when they split. Because I was to afraid to answer, she scowled at me with unforgiving cruelty and retreated to the guest room for the night. Dad, trying to break the tension, said he wanted me to meet the other woman. That I’d really like her. The final wisps of hope, trust and expectation were blown away by a hostile, agonizingly and bitterly cold silence that engulfed our home from that moment on.

During Junior High and High school, I became the class clown. I felt good about myself. It was a false sense of security. In the religious denomination I grew up in, there was not much room for grace, if any. It was, at that point in time, a very works based theology. Basically, I was working as hard as I could to earn my way into heaven. I pleaded and tried to negotiate with God for my sexuality. But nothing worked. The desires would not go away. I knew that because of these ungodly yearnings, there was very little chance of my making it into heaven.

In college I kept going with the entertainment life-theme. I found out I could sing and act. Another good way to cover my feelings. I buried myself in learning the craft of theater and singing. I found acceptance and self-esteem in all this “work”. I remained celebate, which most of my friends in theater could NOT understand. But, the sexual desires were getting stronger and my resolve weaker. I slowly began to retreat into myself. As soon as productions were over, I would leave out the side door, totally avoiding anyone that might tell me I was good. I couldn’t go to cast parties. I would not allow myself to be in places where I might start feeling any emotion on any level for men. At this point, my emotions were so convoluted that if I ever felt any feelings for a man, I would pull away for fear that what I was feeling was evil, or would certainly lead to evil thoughts or desires. This kept me from forming friendships with men…ever!!! I knew that if they ever found out I was gay, they would turn their back on me. And so I began a concerted flight from connection with any people, particularly men.